Join us for a conference call with Katherine Gehl

Monday, January 29th at 7:00 PM Eastern Time (4pm Pacific)

Sign up using this form. We will email you the call details shortly.

About the Conference Call:

John Opdycke, the President of Open Primaries, will interview Katherine Gehl, a business leader and co-author (with Harvard Professor Michael Porter) of a recent Harvard Business School report titled “Why Competition in the Politics Industry is Failing America.”Gehl and Porter’s report is excellent. It challenges conventional wisdom about what’s wrong in politics.

“The starting point for understanding the problem is to recognize that our political system isn’t broken. Washington is delivering exactly what it is currently designed to deliver. The real problem is that our political system is no longer designed to serve the public interest, and has been slowly reconfigured to benefit the private interests of gain-seeking organizations: our major political parties and their industry allies.” - Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter, “Why Competition in the Politics Industry is Failing America.”

Katherine is a passionate advocate for structural political reform and has much to say about how the partisan system - including closed primaries - disempowers the American people.

John will be interviewing Katherine for approximately 30 minutes and then opening it up for questions from participants. Space is limited, so please register today.

Please read the executive summary of Gehl's report “Why Competition in the Politics Industry is Failing America” prior to the conference call on January 29th.You can download it here>

About Katherine Gehl:

Katherine Gehl is a business leader and a political innovation activist.

Katherine was president and CEO of Gehl Foods, Inc., a $250 Million high tech food manufacturing company in Wisconsin where she led an aggressive and transformational growth strategy. In 2015, Katherine sold the company—in part to be able to dedicate more time to political reform.

Katherine’s background also includes roles as Vice President of Bernstein Investment Research and Management, Special Assistant to Mayor Richard M Daley for Technology and Economic Development, Director of Information Technology at Chicago Public Schools and an appointment to the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation under President Barack Obama.

Katherine graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1988 and holds an MA in education from the Catholic University of America, and an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

One thing united American voters this election year: the growing frustration with a political system that is broken, rigged, unfair – choose your favorite adjective.

As a country, we need a new way forward, one that unites Americans with different beliefs and backgrounds. We need an electoral system that makes that possible.

26.3 million independent voters were barred from participating in the Presidential Primary this year, and millions more registered Democrats and Republicans were prevented from voting for the candidate of their choice because of a patchwork of restrictive registration rules. From New York to Arizona, voters across the country -- whose tax dollars fund the primary process -- were denied the right to fully participate. It’s not hard to understand why voter turnout has hit a 20-year low and 70% of all Americans now support open primaries.

As new Chairpersons of the Democratic and Republican Parties, you have a unique opportunity to influence how the presidential primaries are conducted in 2020. The parties have been given the power by the Supreme Court to determine how to conduct their primaries. We encourage you to conduct open primaries in all 50 states in 2020. Let all the American people speak.

Both of your predecessors opposed open primaries. We ask you to re-examine this posture and take such steps as are necessary to adopt rules that require all state party organizations to conduct open primaries in 2020. The country will thank you.